ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the origins of a new epidemic of interrracial violence that began a generation after emancipation. A new generation of black males had come of age in the 1880s, the age when most boys are inclined toward risk-taking and testing the limits of authority whether in the home or in society at-large. “Colored men,” a white Tennessee newspaper editor wrote in 1877, “who have been in the Penitentiary come back and live among their fellows without receiving contumely or social disgrace.” The alternatives to violence were scarce in a society that had emasculated black men economically, socially, and politically. Although the law-abiding, vast majority of blacks sometimes condemned the outlaw’s violence, all could empathize with its dynamics. In a region of pervasive injustice, becoming an “outlaw” could take many forms. Getting “the first shot” was a new perspective for blacks whose violence toward whites had heretofore been primarily reactive.
